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How do you get paid?

published by walter rowe on Sat, 11/13/2010 - 11:35am

There are thousands of concert and music artist blogs on the internet. They host millions of images of music artists. Are you one of these blog owners? Are you getting paid to TAKE your photos (ie. assignment)? If not, how are you monetizing your photos? Are you displaying blog ads? Are you leveraging something like Google Adwords? Are you charging a subscription fee like a legitimate publication? Are you licensing your work via editorial stock licensing and using the blog to attract clients? How well is that working for you?

I know of a number of "photographers" who have blogs displaying hundreds of artists they have photographed. They use these blogs to impress artist reps into granting them more photo passes. They are not shooting on assignment so they never receive a dime to TAKE the photos. So it got me to wondering how/if they make money from their pictures. It also got me wondering whether the artist reps ever ask them how many unique visitors their blogs get per month and subsequently how much publicity the artist really gets from this. If an artist rep really knew how little traffic a given blog received, would we see fewer FWC (fans with credentials)?
 
In the days of traditional print media, artist reps knew the photographers, and the reputation and circulation of the publications for which they were shooting. There was much better understanding by the artist rep about how much publicity an artist really would get by being in that publication. With these thousands of blogs out there today, how much publicity does an artist really get by appearing on any one of them or even on the aggregate of all of them versus sticking with the well established publications that have moved to the electronic publication platform?
 
I've just been wondering how much publicity an artist really gets from one of these "fan publications". And I've been questioning whether someone who is not monetizing their photographs in some way actually qualifies as a legitimate professional or publication? And to go one step further, how much are these non-monetizing blogs and "publications" impacting the livelihood of those of us who are trying to get paid for our work? Is there any chance that record labels would care about how much traffic an online "publication" really gets and consequently how much publicity their artist would really get for appearing there?
 
What are your feelings about this? I'd love to see a passionate discussion on this.
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General Discussion

Submitted by liverdog on Mon, 11/22/2010 - 2:57pm.

I get paid by the image, per publication. Its the same in all fields of photography, not just concert photography. There are people out there with a lot of free time and money who decide to be concert photographers. You can see them in the pits with the horrible etiquette. I go to shows, shoot and them submit to publications. if I get published, I get paid. if none print I get nada. That's pretty much the way it is for doing solely concert photography. I do have a few bands that I follow and do a bunch of concert shots for that are not paying me. The dont get my work until they do. I am only using the concert shots for full access to the bands. Its those candid, pre-show, rehearsal, recording, images that I want to get of them. Then I package the whole thing up for their publicist and charge them money for that.
Good Concert images are a necessity, but a well balance promotional package is much more than just a location shoot and silly poses.
I have only been doing Concert work for 4 years, and the money i have made off of it could barely buy a cheap lens. Getting in with publicists as the go to guy is much more important than being able to get good concert photos. They just open the door.
More and more, I am seeing shows that don't even allow wire service photographers. so it seems that getting in with a respected publication and shooting exclusively for them is coming back into vogue.

Submitted by loftisphoto on Thu, 12/16/2010 - 2:34pm.

You're response was on target, liverdog.  Give anyone a good quality point-n-shoot and they will eventually capture a few really good performance shots.  When publicists, publishers, and even the musicians can get those few for free from thousands of fans, I can see why they would have a hard time paying a pro a few hundred for what they consider to be about the same quality.  More music photo income comes from non-performance work.

For a year or two, I have been photographing musicians on the Gulf Coast where the economy was destroyed by oil-phobia and other factors.  Musicians have very low paying gigs here, assuming they can get any.  So, I am liberal with very small digital performance images I shoot at various venues.  Many of them just give me credit when they use them on the web.  Now that the economy is slowly starting to come back, they have begun to contact me for larger files for gig announcement posters and other items.  That's when I get paid.  Because of all the small files with my logo (and often a link to my website), I finding musicians know of me before I meet them.  Some are starting to call me for photo work other than performance shots.  That's when I can charge for the shoot as well as licensing fees for the photos.

So, I keep networking through the music community.  As the economy improves, they will know who to call when they need professional photos.